Drama

In the hands of Sophocles, the master dramatist, the anguished tale of a man fated to kill his father and marry his mother retains its power to shock and move beyond any Freudian reference....

In this BBC full-cast production of Much Ado About Nothing, some handsome soldiers return from battle. Yet one soldier finds himself locked in a merry war of his own....

In this classic of Chekhov’s canon, an overbearing professor pays a visit to his country estate, where Sonya and Vanya, his daughter and former brother-in-law, have slaved to maintain his wealth....

Stacy Keach and Jane Kaczmarek star in this 1949 masterpiece by Arthur Miller, a searing portrait of the physical, emotional, and psychological costs of the American dream....

Miss Julie is probably the most famous play by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, one of the founding fathers of naturalistic theater....

Inspired by the mythic house of Thebes, Sophocles’s defining Greek tragedies follow the fates that befall three doomed generations....

Oedipus the King is the story of a man whose life is destroyed by his own good intentions. When a terrible secret from his past is brought to the light of day, the consequences are chilling....

You learn how drama makes visible the conflicts and wars of culture in ways other forms cannot manage....

Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s most compelling Roman plays. The plot against Caesar and the infamous assassination scene make for unforgettable listening....

Four classic comedies from one of the wittiest playwrights in Western literature....

The multi award-winning SmartPass study guide with and without commentary options. A full-cast, unabridged performance with comprehensive commentary and analysis....

Goethe’s two-part dramatic work, Faust, based on a traditional theme, and finally completed in 1831, is an exploration of that restless intellectual and emotional urge which found its fullest expression in the European Romantic movement....

Sophocles' The Theban Plays, all three of which are included in this collection alongside adaptations of Electra and Philoctetes, are brought to life by celebrated writers, poets, and playwrights....

George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is a fussy unmarried professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins, who claims that he could train an uneducated person off the street to speak so that he or she could pass as a member of the aristocracy. His pick is Eliza Doolittle, who sells flowers....

This final play from the pen of Oscar Wilde is a stylish send-up of Victorian courtship and manners, complete with assumed names, mistaken lovers, and a lost handbag....

Antigone is a famous Greek tragedy attributed to the ancient playwright Sophocles at around 440 BCE. The play expands on the Theban legend of Oedipus that predates it, dealing with Antigone’s burial of her brother Polyneices in defiance of the law....

An easy-going drama critic discovers that his kind and gentle aunts have a bizarre habit of poisoning gentlemen callers and burying them in the cellar....

In Richard III, Shakespeare invites us on a moral holiday. The play draws us to identify with Richard and his fantasy of total control of self and domination of others....

A work of timeless, bittersweet beauty about the fading fortunes of an aristocratic Russian family....

In The Oresteia, Aeschylus dramatizes the myth of the curse on the royal house of Argos....

A tender love story, a serpentine villainess, a glittering setting in London society, and a showering of Wildean witticism....

All the world is a stage, Shakespeare tells us, and we are all its players. In fact, since the dawn of human history, we find evidence of theatre and performance....

In Oedipus at Colonus, the banished king, after years of wandering, accompanied by his faithful daughter Antigone, finds himself in Athens....

Brilliantly manipulative and entirely amoral, the hero-villain Richard is one of Shakespeare's greatest roles....

Hamlet, which dates from 1600-1601, is the first in Shakespeare's great series of four tragedies....